Inside of the men’s room door in a Mexican restaurant we’ve been to a few times, located in a part of town we normally don’t frequent.
Lots of what I assume to be gang names – but no cartoon dicks and no outright obscenities that I can see. So maybe it’s performance art instead of grafitti?
That is one hideous shade of green, however!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
Looking for something to share tonight, I ended up back in the pictures I took on my iPhone 13 just after Thanksgiving. We were visiting the Science Museum, primarily to see Endeavour, but also to see an IMAX film.
One of the pictures I took there reminded me of a picture I remember from just a month or so after I got my first digital camera, in 1999.
640 x 480 pixels. 100,512 bytes. Taken with an Epson digital camera that my dad gave to me. (He worked at Epson, got an early peek at these newfangled devices).
This is the entryway between the IMAX theater and the main museum lobby. Purple tinted skylight, several hundred gold balls hanging down.
It was July, 1999 and my three kids were with me, ages 9, 12, and 14. I was doing the single dad thing and it would be almost another year before I met The Long-Suffering Wife.
(There was no building out back with a Space Shuttle in it.)
4032 x 3024 pixels. 4,705,344 kbytes. Taken with an iPhone.
It was November, 2023 and two of my three kids were with me, ages 33 and 38.
The museum has grown considerably, and is quickly growing even more as the annex to hold Endeavour, the last flight-rated external fuel tank, and two flight ready solid rocket boosters, all combined into a vertical stack just like they would be when ready for launch.
The photographic resolution has skyrocketed. Today’s “older model pocket-sized supercomputer” (i.e., an iPhone 13) has forty times the resolution of yesterday’s cutting edge next big thing.
Welcome to the future!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Space
So it’s going to be like THAT, eh, 2024?
We got woken up early when the LA Shake earthquake warning app went off and told us to expect possible shaking any second.
That will get your attention. We got ready for a rumble. Which never came.
A minute or two later I started checking social media and found that there had, in fact, been a fairly good shaker. A M4.3 earthquake in the ocean off of Palos Verdes, about half way between Long Beach and Catalina Island.
Good that the system works, I guess. Good that there was little or no actual damage that I’ve heard of. Good that it wasn’t a false alarm. Somewhat less good that we started the year by being woken from a sound sleep and having the crap scared out of us.
I’ve spent the last few minutes posting a warning on all of my social media outlets, so I’ll repeat it here.
Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles
Want to see a Christmas miracle?
I know that it MUST happen more than once every fifty years, but it’s the first time that I’ve ever seen this freeway congestion map 100% green everywhere, all the way from Tijuana to Tulare, Santa Maria to Palm Springs.
We made it all the way from our house to LAX and back in less than 90 minutes. Granted it was O’Dark Thirty on Christmas morning, but still…
I hope it was a wonderful holiday for you if you celebrate!
Filed under Christmas Lights, Los Angeles, Photography
Last night we were downtown at the Music Center, which is all gussied up for the holidays.
One of the things that the views and lights brought to mind, which is not an entirely new concept, is that I’ve never gone around downtown as a tourist or photographer and just been there to take pictures.
Sure, I’m down at the Music Center eight or ten times a year and I always take a few pictures. I’ve run past a lot of the primary landmarks (City Hall, the LA Catherdral, the Music Center, Hollywood, Century City, etc) because they’re on the LA Marathon course – but I haven’t taken pictures because I’m pretty focused on breathing and not dying.
But when I visit a new city, I love to simply wander around, look at the sights, and take a metric shit-ton of pictures. Look back through the nearly ten years of posts here and you’ll see a dozen or more examples. New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, London, Prague, Chicago, Brussels, Shanghai, Washington, Seoul, Kyoto, Seattle, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Denver, Puerto Vallarta, Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto… I’m sure I’ve forgotten some.
But Los Angeles? Sure, I’ve got a gazillion photos as I wander here and there. But a day or two just wandering around downtown, getting on the Metro, taking pictures of all of the tourist traps that I would see in the first day or two if I was just visiting for a week? I may have a picture, I may not.
Sounds like something to do for a day once I get out of Deadline Hell.
Filed under Christmas Lights, Los Angeles, Photography
And we’re off!!
The parking is full, full, full!!! But the view crossing back from the Court House parking garage to the Music Center is wonderful!
I’ll try not to shoot my eye out!
Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Photography
I ran over to our office today and on the way home I noticed that this huge block of land, about a half-mile square, has been fenced off. It’s a huge vacant area with one big office building (12 stories? 15?) that used to be an insurance company office headquarters. (Anthem?)
Anyway, bordered by Canoga, Oxnard, Owensmouth, and Erwin, in the Warner Center area, that’s really valuable land and a LOT of it.
The fencing is a bit different – normally they’ll have these screens but they’ll be black or green or something non-descript. But this was a bright blue. A particular shade of bright blue, is my guess.
There was zero grafitti on any of these fences. That’s how I know that it’s only been up a day or two at most.
As for that shade of blue? Well, the new owner of that huge plot of land, and what they plan on doing there, is well known.
Traffic near the office is going to start to suck (even worse), real soon now.
Filed under KC Chiefs, Los Angeles, Photography
Did I mention that on the day after Thanksgiving I went down to the California Science Center near the USC campus and the Coliseum in downtown Los Angeles and saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour?
It’s just a tiny little bit freakin’ awesome.
Scorched tiles on the belly above us.
The business end with the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs).
Twenty-five missions, from May 1992 until May 2011.
It’s on display until December 31st like this, then it will be off display for a couple of years. There’s a huge new building under construction next to this one where it will be displayed in the upright, “ready to launch” configuration.
In addition to Endeavour, the museum also has the last surviving flight-rated external fuel tank, and two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs).
Once they put it all together in a vertical configuration, it will look just like it did on the launch pad, ready to go to space. When you first come in from the parking lot you can see the two SRBs standing up, peeking over the top of the outside walls of the new building.
As you leave the exhibition, over yonder you can see the orange foam of that final external tank.
It’s going to be spectacular to see!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Space
Twenty years ago. Venice Beach, with Santa Monica Pier in the hazy distance.
I’ve never been much of a “beach person.” Too damn crowded and cramped. But it’s an interesting place to visit every now and then.
Especially Venice. It’s earned its reputation.
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
The 2022-2023 season at the Ahmanson is over and the new 2023-2024 season doesn’t start until December.
But in the meantime they have squeezed in a return engagement of one of last year’s hits (and a huge Tony Award winner from 2019 when it was on Broadway.)
We enjoyed it the first time, and we’ll take any excuse to get “oot und aboot” on a Saturday night, so here we are!
Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography
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